Online sales can be a challenging business area to improve without the right know-how. That’s where a specialised agency comes in to leverage its knowledge and experience to the client’s benefit.

One of our clients is a health food company that specialises in healthy cordials and sugar-free syrups. Their goal is to provide flavourful beverages that don’t come with excessive calories.

The company started in 2020 via eCommerce and immediately sought out solutions to boost its online sales. In their efforts to achieve the revenue that their products deserve, they identified the direct response campaign as the right tool for achieving the desired results.

However, this health food company had never run such a campaign before.

So, they needed help in the form of an agency that they could partner up with and take their intentions seriously, as well as provide detailed reporting.

GMS turned out to be perfect for the job. The company needed to reach their ideal audience with their offer, and GMS could provide just that.

The cooperation proved a success due to how GMS approached the issue. In particular, two things helped the company achieve remarkable results.

This article will look at what GMS did that made the difference and the results this approach garnered.

Our Approach (And the Two Things That Made All of the Difference)

Testing during the early campaign stages was the priority in the strategy that GMS employed.

When determining the right approach, GMS split the acquisition budgets into four product categories. Then, several direct response campaigns were tested on different platforms: the company’s website, the audience network, and the brand’s social media accounts.

The goal of the testing phase was to determine which campaign produced the most positive response from the audience.

Once that’s done, the next move was to form and launch a strategy for Google. The main focus was on branded, generic, and dynamic searches, with an accent on smart shopping and a more substantial ad spend return.

The core categories needed to be separated into different self-branded searches. Additionally, GMS launched keyword campaigns individually for various syrup types that the company produces. These included cocktail premixes, general syrups, and coffee syrups.

A separate campaign was launched for the “keto” keyword since it was a prevalent diet trend. This campaign primarily focused on Google Search and YouTube smart shopping.

After the learning phase, which saw dramatic increases in return on investment, the core focus turned to dynamic search. The reason behind this decision was that dynamic searches produced an excellent conversion rate of almost 7%, as well as a solid average return and average sale cost.

When it came to self-branded search terms, the return and conversion rates were even better than they were with dynamic searches.

For the social campaign going on simultaneously with search campaigns, the KPIs were set somewhat aggressively to $1,000 in daily sales. The targeted approach made sales reach those KPIs in no more than two weeks.

These campaigns relied on spending smarter, not harder.

The solution wasn’t to throw money at the issue but rather to select the best-performing categories. And this wouldn’t have been possible were it not for the data presented in the campaign’s initial stages.

Retargeting with dynamic, small-budget ads was a crucial factor regarding spending, and retargeting by product category proved especially effective. This phase was instrumental in pushing for return sales. At this point, the campaign focused on hot and warm audiences, encouraging them to repeat their purchases of the brand’s products.

Overall, the combined efforts ended with resounding success, and the strategy employed can be distilled to two key principles:

  1. Testing during the early stages of the campaign, which provided the necessary data that informed other phases.

  2. Spending smart instead of spending hard, which was a crucial element of the retargeting campaign and made a positive impact on the budget.

The Results

The health food company noticed increasingly better results by working with GMS as the weeks went by.

In the first week, the return on investment increased by three times. And further optimisations boosted it to five times.

KPI implementation led to a four-time ROI during the first week. Also, the set KPIs were hit much faster than expected, leading to a nine-fold return on investment.

Once the campaigns were fully optimised and spend increased, the ROI on ads rose between 7 and 10 times. The original KPIs for daily sales was set to $1,000, but the company managed to surpass that goal and reached an average of $1,700 in sales per day.

The company’s revenue increased by 216% in the first two months of working with GMS. And the total number of orders had a 208% increase, while the website traffic was boosted by 135%.

Overall, our client saw unprecedented success in the months following the start of the campaign. All crucial aspects of the company were positively affected, including sales, revenue and return on ad spend.

By adding Google to the equation, they gained another channel besides the social network branding that allowed them to improve their sales further.

GMS helped the company achieve impressive results due to a successful direct response campaign and the two key principles discussed above.

You Can Achieve This, Too

The strategies used in the case of our client are by no means exclusive. Every business can benefit greatly from a properly set up direct response campaign, reaching and surpassing the desired goals.

Of course, running such campaigns effectively requires a level of expertise that only a specialised agency can provide.

Luckily for this health food company, the knowledge and strategies that GMS brought to the table were the very solutions that the company needed to achieve its goal of boosting its online sales. And with the right help, your company can start thriving, too.

If you like what you’ve read here, know that these solutions are available to you too. Schedule a free consultation with GMS and find out how we can help your digital ad strategy.